If you think 2020 was a disaster because you had to stay home and bake sourdough, you’re in for a reality check. Honestly, our modern version of a "bad year" usually involves a stock market dip or a global pandemic that—while terrifying—didn't actually block out the sun.
Historians used to argue about this all the time. Was it 1347, when the Black Death started turning Europe into a graveyard? Or 1918, when the Spanish Flu was picking off people who had just managed to survive the trenches of World War I?
Both are solid candidates. But if you ask Michael McCormick, a medieval historian at Harvard University, he’ll point to a year you probably haven't even thought about.
536 AD.
That’s the one. No contest.
It wasn't just a "bad year." It was the start of a decade of literal darkness that felt like the world was actually ending.
The Day the Sun Turned Blue
Imagine waking up on a Tuesday in March. You walk outside, and the sun looks... wrong. It’s faint. It has a weird, bluish tint. You look at your feet, and there is no shadow.
That isn't some creepy creepypasta; it was the reality for millions of people across Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. A mysterious, dense fog rolled in and just stayed there. For eighteen months.
Procopius, a Byzantine historian who lived through it, wrote that the sun gave off light "without brightness." It looked like a permanent eclipse. People were terrified because, back then, if the sun stopped working, you assumed God was done with you.
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But it wasn't God. It was geology.
Researchers eventually figured out that a massive volcanic eruption in Iceland (or possibly North America, though Iceland is the lead suspect) puked enough ash and sulfate into the atmosphere to create a global "dust veil." This veil didn't just look spooky. It acted like a giant mirror in the sky, bouncing the sun's warmth back into space.
A Summer That Never Showed Up
The temperature didn't just drop; it plummeted.
Summer temperatures in 536 fell by as much as 2.5°C (4.5°F). That might not sound like much when you're adjusting your thermostat, but for a global ecosystem? It’s a death sentence.
It was the coldest decade in 2,300 years. In China, records show snow falling in August. Read that again. August.
The crops didn't stand a chance.
- Ireland: The Annals of Ulster report "a failure of bread."
- Scandinavia: Archeologists found that nearly 50% of villages in parts of Sweden were abandoned.
- The Americas: The Moche culture in Peru faced massive droughts that disrupted their entire civilization.
People were starving in the dark. It’s hard to overstate how scary that would be. You’re cold, you’re hungry, and you haven't seen a clear sky in over a year. You don't know why it's happening, and you have no way to fix it.
Why 536 AD outranks the competition
You might wonder why this beats 1347 or 1945.
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In 1347, the plague was visible. You knew what was killing you, even if you didn't understand germs. In 1945, the horror was man-made.
But 536 was a total breakdown of the natural order. It felt supernatural. If you lived in Northern Europe, this event likely inspired the Norse myth of Fimbulvetr—the "Great Winter" that precedes Ragnarök, the end of the world. Imagine being so traumatized by the weather that your entire culture writes a myth about the sun being eaten by a wolf.
Then Came the Rats
Just when people thought it couldn't get worse, it did.
By 541, the world was already weakened by famine. Malnourished bodies have terrible immune systems. That’s when the Plague of Justinian hit. This was the first major recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis). It started in Egypt and hitched a ride on grain ships to Constantinople.
At its peak, it was killing 10,000 people a day in the city. There wasn't enough room to bury them, so they just stuffed bodies into the towers of the city walls.
The empire was basically paralyzed. Justinian himself caught the plague but managed to survive, though his dream of reuniting the Roman Empire died with his tax base. When half your population dies, you can’t exactly pay for a world-class army.
The Ripple Effect Nobody Talks About
We often look at history as a series of isolated dates, but 536 was the first domino in a century-long collapse.
Silver mining in Europe basically stopped. We know this because of ice cores from the Swiss Alps. Lead pollution (a byproduct of silver smelting) completely disappears from the ice layers during this time. It doesn't show back up until 640 AD.
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That is 100 years of economic silence.
It wasn't all bad everywhere, though. Interestingly, some research suggests the increased rainfall in the Arabian Peninsula—caused by the shift in climate—actually led to more vegetation. This may have helped the expansion of nomadic tribes, indirectly playing a role in the rise of the Islamic Caliphates. History is weird like that. One man’s apocalypse is another man's opportunity.
Is 536 AD Still the Scariest Year?
Some modern historians, like Lee Mordechai, argue we might be over-sensationalizing it a bit. He points out that while the climate data is undeniable, some contemporary writers didn't seem to think it was the end of the world. They mentioned it, sure, but they kept writing about taxes and church politics like usual.
Maybe they were just resilient. Or maybe they were just used to things being miserable.
Still, if you had to pick a time to be alive, 536 is the absolute bottom of the list. It’s the year where the "lights went out" and the "Great Winter" began.
What you can do with this information:
If you find yourself doom-scrolling and feeling like our current era is the worst it’s ever been, use the 536 AD metric.
- Check the sky: Is the sun blue? No? You’re doing okay.
- Check the weather: Is it snowing in August? If not, the food supply is probably stable.
- Perspective shift: Understanding historical "bottlenecks" can actually reduce anxiety about the present by showing just how much humanity can endure.
To dig deeper into how we know all this, look up the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. They are the ones who analyzed the ultra-thin layers of ice that finally solved the mystery of the 536 "darkness." It turns out, the secret to our scariest year was frozen in a glacier all along.